Rep. Elijah Cummings warned Rep. Darrell Issa against turning a potential contempt resolution against Attorney General Eric Holder over the Fast and Furious scandal into “an election-year witch hunt,” he wrote in a letter late last week.

“Holding someone in contempt of Congress is one of the most serious and formal actions our Committee can take, and it should not be used as a political tool to generate press as part of an election-year witch hunt against the Obama Administration,” the Maryland Democrat wrote Friday to Issa, the California Republican who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Last Thursday, the Los Angeles Times reported that House Speaker John Boehner had “given the green light” to Issa to pursue a contempt citation against Holder and the Justice Department for failing to comply with the panel’s investigation into the controversial program. The paper reportedly obtained a 48-page draft of the document, prompting Cummings, in his letter, to accuse Issa of leaking it to the press before distributing it to the committee.

“Leaking a draft contempt citation that Members of our Committee have never seen suggests that you are more interested in perpetuating your partisan political feud in the press than in obtaining any specific substantive information relating to the Committee’s investigation,” he wrote. “These actions undermine the credibility of the Committee, as well as the integrity and validity of any contempt actions the Committee ultimately may choose to adopt in the future.”

Committee sources have confirmed the document’s authenticity, but said a final decision had not been made on whether to put the issue to a floor vote.

The craven, distructive arrogance of these people never ceases to amaze. Great investigation here by National Review Online.

Bernardine Dohrn has a history with the Justice Department. More specifically, in the early 1970s, she was one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives because of her actions with the Weather Underground, a violent radical organization.

Times have changed. In 2010 and 2011, the Justice Department saw fit to give $400,000 in grants to an organization that lists Dohrn as a member of its board of directors: a $150,000 grant in September of 2010 and a $250,000 grant a year later.

The organization that received the grants is the W. Haywood Burns Institute, and the project that brought in the money is the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative. JDAI aims to keep juvenile criminals out of “secure confinement” and to reduce racial disparities in the juvenile justice system.

As a prominent figure in the Weather Underground — which was initially known as simply “Weatherman” — Dohrn helped lead the “Days of Rage” Chicago riot, and during her tenure the group was responsible for numerous bombings of government buildings…She’s now a law professor at Northwestern University, and her husband, fellow Weather Underground co-founder William Ayers, is a retired education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

A defiant Sheriff Joe Arpaio is preparing to tell President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder later today there is “no way” he will turn over the management of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office to the Justice Department despite the threat of a federal lawsuit.

“Clean your own house, Eric Holder, before you come trying to clean mine,” Arpaio said today in a telephone interview with WND.

As WND reported, the Justice Department informed Arpaio yesterday it plans to take him to federal court on allegations of systematic violations of the civil rights of Hispanics. Holder has sought an agreement to establish a court monitor in Arpaio’s office to clear his decisions.

Arpaio has scheduled a press conference for 3 p.m. local time today at his office in downtown Phoenix.

‘I won’t surrender’

The sheriff charged that the Obama administration is attacking him in an effort to gain Hispanic votes in November for the Democratic Party.

“This is a coordinated effort directed from the White House to deflect attention from Eric Holder’s failure to cooperate in the congressional investigation into Fast and Furious,” he said.

Arpaio accused Obama of wanting to make him the “poster boy” in the administration’s public relations effort to deflect attention from Holder.

As WND has reported, the Justice Department has refused to produce evidence substantiating the allegations against Arpaio, insisting that the allegations themselves are sufficient to demand a remedy.

“It’s ironic, don’t you think,” Arpaio said, “that Eric Holder refuses to comply with congressional subpoenas to deliver to Congress the information about his management of the Justice Department, but the Justice Department has no hesitation to make public their complaints about me despite the fact those allegation have never been proved to be true?”

Obama eligibility investigation to continue

Arpaio also told WND he will not abandon his volunteer team’s investigation into Obama’s eligibility for the Arizona presidential ballot.

“The Obama investigation remains ongoing,” he confirmed. “I have no intention of abandoning the Obama investigation until the Cold Case Posse has done its job.”

Arpaio’s office has announced the sheriff is preparing for a second press conference to update findings of the Cold Case Posse.

At a press conference in Phoenix March 1, Arpaio announced his team had found probable cause that Obama’s long form birth certificate and his Selective Service draft registration form were forgeries.

Arpaio contended it was no coincidence Holder decided to sue his office immediately after the government’s lawyers were grilled by the Supreme Court in oral arguments over the constitutionality of Arizona’s tough immigration law, SB 1070.

“I’ve had a 50-year career in law enforcement, including many years with the Justice Department in senior positions. Now, Eric Holder’s Justice Department is turning on me just because I’m doing my job enforcing immigration laws.”

The House Wednesday evening voted overwhelmingly to prevent the Justice Department from using taxpayer funds to lie to Congress.

The vote came in a Wednesday evening series of amendments to a bill, H.R. 5326, funding the Justice Department for 2013. Members approved the language in a 381-41 vote; all 41 "no" votes came from Democrats, although 142 Democrats voted with Republicans in support of the amendment.

The vote reflects the ongoing frustration Republicans — and apparently some Democrats — have with Attorney General Eric Holder.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) offered the novel funding limitation amendment earlier in the day. The amendment was a reaction to arguments that Justice lied when it told Congress in February 2011 that it had no involvement in a gun-walking program called Operation Fast and Furious.

That program allowed guns to enter Mexico and fall into the hands of drug cartel members. Justice later retracted the 2011 letter and acknowledged that the so-called Fast and Furious program was flawed, but Republicans have since argued that Attorney General Eric Holder has stonewalled their requests for more information about the operation.

"What is totally and wholly unacceptable … is that the Department of Justice would knowingly and willfully present a letter back to Congress on Feb. 4 [2011], that was so inaccurate and so wrong," Chaffetz said during debate. "They basically lied to Congress, and it took months and months and months and months to get to the point where they finally had to rescind that letter."

Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) also accused Holder and others who "stonewall at best, and lie more likely," and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) fumed that no one has been punished for the scandal.

"There hasn't been a demotion, there hasn't been a firing, there hasn't been a sanction, there hasn't been a frowny-face on a performance evaluation," he said.The House also approved other controversial funding limitation amendments, including one to prevent Justice from defending the 2010 healthcare law, and to prevent Justice from suing states over over voter ID laws.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) proposed the amendment to block the use of funds in the bill to defend the 2010 healthcare law in court. That amendment was approved in a partisan 229-194 vote.

Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) offered language preventing Justice from taking actions against states that require photo identification at voting booths. His language was added in a 232-190 vote.

An amendment from Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) to prevent Justice from spending money to litigate against states on behalf of the National Labor Relations Board in cases relating to secret ballots in union elections was approved 232-192. And, language from Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) to prevent Justice from being party to court settlements involving the removal of funds from mortgage backed securities trusts was approved 238-185.

The filmmaker behind the Oscar-nominated documentary “Waco: The Rules of Engagement” is gearing up to shed light on Operation: Fast and Furious.

Colo.-based Michael McNulty has been watching the media give scant attention to the scandal, one which involves U.S. letting arms cross into Mexico as part of an anti-gunning running probe and has GOP officials scrambling to get Attorney General Eric Holder to reveal all the information behind the matter.

Now, McNulty has had enough.

The filmmaker, who won an Emmy for his “Waco” documentary, is back behind the camera because, as he puts it, the press has failed to do its job.

“I’ve sat and watched this mess percolate for the better part of the year,” McNulty tells Big Hollywood. And while camera men and reporters alike might want to tackle a story involving drugs, automatic weapons, murder and mayhem, the press hasn’t grabbed hold of the story like other political scandals.

“On the grunt level, the guy behind the camera … you find a genuine enthusiasm for the story and pursuing it,” he says. “It’s the assignment editor who starts the ball rolling. It ain’t happening at that level. I suspect the marching orders the assignment editors get is, ‘leave it alone.’”

McNulty won’t. And he has faith he can wrap "Blood on their Hands" in time for the November elections. Perhaps even earlier.

“We think that having such an important issue that’s been in the news somewhere brought forth with some factual truth being presented is important,” he says. “This is not a Democratic or Republican political issue. It’s a moral issue about right and wrong. If this had been a Republican Attorney General I’d take the same approach I’m taking now. It’s about people being killed under the aegis of our government in another country.”

McNulty served time in the Vietnam War as a photographer, and he’s seen some of the atrocities of war. But that often pales to the actions of the Mexican drug cartels.

“There is a horror show going on in that country that’s unrivaled anywhere,” he says.

McNulty’s team is using Kickstarter.com to help defray costs, and the site’s strict guidelines won’t allow photographs even hinting at the killings being done by the cartels.

Even critics of the Fast and Furious program aren’t on the same page regarding its original purpose. McNulty thinks he has the answer.

“When somebody at the top of the food chain lies, what do the folks below him do?” he asks. “The lie was, and still is, … that 90 percent of the firearms traced by the ATF come from an American gun shop. I think I know of one gun shop in Colorado, maybe two, that can sell you a machine gun. The weapon of choice of the cartel is not semi-automatic but fully automatic weapons.”

But where are the weapons coming from? McNulty’s film hopes to find some answers.

McNulty's latest project does have a connection to his Oscar-nominated Waco documentary. During the Waco scandal, then-Attorney General appointed a deputy to help sort out the truth - Eric Holder.

"Eric’s been busy in the cover up business for 20 years. We sorta know how he operates," he says.

South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, one of the most outspoken Congressional critics of the Operation Fast and Furious scandal, said Thursday that he thinks President Barack Obama may end up firing Attorney General Eric Holder before the election.

“Oh, I think the thing that drives 99.9 percent of all elected officials is very easy to put your finger on,” Gowdy said in an interview with NRA News’ Ginny Simone. “It starts with a ‘re’ and ends with ‘election.’”

“I think that if he [Obama] believes that the Attorney General has become something of an albatross, and is impacting his ability to carry some swing states, Eric Holder will be in the private practice of law quicker than you say Marc Rich,” Gowdy said.

Rich is the billionaire commodities trader who was under federal indictment for illegally making oil deals with Iran during the hostage crisis in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Holder ultimately facilitated President Bill Clinton’s pardon of Rich on Clinton’s last day in office.

Gowdy said that he, Rep. Darrell Issa and others pushing for accountability on Operation Fast and Furious will not stop until they get all the answers.

Gowdy also said he and Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz had privately discussed how they think they would be similarly aggressive with a Republican administration in regards to Fast and Furious. However, Holder has not complied with an Oversight Committee subpoena, and his defenders have criticized Republican efforts to go after the Attorney General.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa served Holder a subpoena on Oct. 12, 2011. Holder has thus far failed to comply with all 22 categories of the subpoena that requires him to provide Congress with documents relating to Fast and Furious. With 13 of the categories, Holder has provided no documents. When it comes to the other nine subpoena categories, Holder is still far from compliant, as TheDC reported late last week.